Jewish dish hummus. Fragrant hummus: classic recipes for a Jewish dish. We prepare hummus according to classic recipes from chickpeas and sesame seeds, vegetables. Lazy hummus: a classic recipe made from canned chickpeas

Jewish dish hummus. Fragrant hummus: classic recipes for a Jewish dish. We prepare hummus according to classic recipes from chickpeas and sesame seeds, vegetables. Lazy hummus: a classic recipe made from canned chickpeas

02.02.2024 Treatment

brand chef of the Poehali restaurant, culinary columnist for Kommersant Weekend

Hummus in Israel and Arab countries is called chickpeas. Gorbanzo, chickpeas, chikpis, nakhot, shish - that's all about him. The fact is that chickpea flour hummus is one of the oldest foods on earth and a basic element in the diet of many Middle Eastern peoples. Israel, Lebanon and Palestine bitterly dispute the right to be called his homeland. But it’s better to throw peas at each other than bullets. Director Trevor Graham, whose film "Make Hummus Not War" caused a stir at the Berlin festival in 2012, offers his solution to the long-standing Middle East crisis: a common favorite food should become a common destiny, and a simple hummus made from chickpea flour will help people keep their sanity. After all, when pronouncing the English chickpeas, you always hear peace - peace.

The peasants of medieval Spain believed that hearty gorbanzo stews could replace meat. In French Provence, legendary socca flatbreads are still baked from chickpea flour and fried chickpea polenta sticks - panissa - are prepared. In India, since ancient times, these peas have been the basis of vegetarian cuisine. To what does he owe such popularity? Firstly, together with lentils, chickpeas share first place in terms of the amount of protein (among plant foods, naturally), and with green vegetables - in terms of the amount of fiber. Secondly, it contains incredibly healthy indigestible starch, which promotes good digestion and cleanses the body of toxins. Like all legumes, chickpeas help keep diabetes under control and reduce the risk of both heart disease and colorectal cancer. In addition, hummus is a gluten-free product, which is also important. One serving of boiled chickpeas contains only 170 calories, but such a serving fills you up for a long time.

Hummus spread is one of the most common spreads in the world. This wonderful pasta can be both an appetizer and a separate independent dish. In Moscow, too, there is hummus, and everywhere - from French to Uzbek restaurants. And, of course, it is sold in supermarkets. I've tried store-bought hummus many times - I didn't like any of it, it was all vinegar. Believe me, you only need to cook it yourself once and you will understand that it is not at all difficult, but incredibly tasty. True, hummus contains one irreplaceable ingredient, which is not always easy to buy - tahini (sesame seed paste). Making it at home is as easy as shelling pears: dry 100 grams of sesame seeds in the oven, then pour it into a blender and grind, gradually adding olive oil (half a glass will be just right).

To tell the truth, a person who has at least once visited the Levant (Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon) and tried this achievement of local cuisine will also go nowhere without hummus. You miss it, you sing its praises, you start cooking it with your own hands literally just after returning from the airport. Fortunately, all the products for its preparation are also inexpensive in our latitudes.

Hummus is a common Middle Eastern cold appetizer made from chickpeas and tahini (sesame paste). Often quite spicy. Always a very delicate, uniform consistency, slightly oily. What distinguishes it from ordinary chickpea puree is precisely this very tahini (more about it below) and a special set of spices (more about them a little later).

Chickpeas are traditionally served with pita bread. Gastronomic traditionalists will even tell you that The only way to scoop up real homemade hummus is a bread “spoon” of pita bread. You tear off a piece, roll it up with a spoon, and scoop it up. However, it will also go great with pita bread, fresh bread or corn crackers. The worst thing is that it will also work without bread. With a spoon. Unstoppable.

In our area, hummus is still considered exotic. And in any Israeli home (no matter Jewish or Arab) it is just as likely to be found in the refrigerator as in ours - a piece of sausage, cheese or butter. And, of course, as happens with all such common dishes, each housewife makes homemade hummus a little differently.

Basic principles

There are six main ingredients in hummus: chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, black pepper. For some reason, many Russian-speaking recipe writers do not consider olive oil an indispensable ingredient. This is wrong: if you don't add oil, you'll have to double or triple the amount of tahini to achieve the desired consistency, and the dish risks becoming simply inedible.

In principle, an acceptable option is to leave some of the water in which the chickpeas were cooked, then you will actually be able to make the hummus quite tender. But - rather watery than oily.

So we, following the Israeli and Palestinian housewives, recommend not to discount olive oil, and pour it quite generously, without sparing it: a good half a glass for half a pan of hummus.

Not canonical, but repeatedly tested in practice, we would recommend adding a small piece of butter as soon as you remove the chickpeas from the heat and add salt. The texture of the puree will become softer and more delicate.

Important clarification: you need to make hummus from still hot chickpeas. Then the oils will mix better with the puree, the seasonings will be better revealed, and the structure will be more uniform.

Many people recommend peeling the skins from already cooked chickpeas. In principle, you don’t have to do this if you boil the chickpeas very well (until the peas start to fall apart), and then grind everything well with a blender.

But let's get back to the ingredients. Firstly, probably not all Russian housewives know what “tahina” is (aka tahini, aka tahini or sesame paste). Tahini is a thick, oily paste made from ground sesame seeds. It is used mainly for making hummus and falafel, and is also included in some sauces. The simplest one, popular throughout the Levant, is tahini + lemon juice + garlic + black pepper + paprika + a little cold water. You can also add cumin, chili pepper, parsley. And eat it with pita bread or fried/baked meat.

There is no hummus without tahini. Basically, if you make chickpea puree without it, it's all It will still be amazingly tasty, but not hummus.

By the way, try experimenting and adding tahini to our more traditional bean puree. Not much, literally one tablespoon for 4-5 servings. The taste will not change radically (and we don’t need that), but it will become more interesting and expressive.

It may well happen that you won’t find tahini in stores you know. And if there are no Arab stalls nearby, and no one you know is going to the Eastern Mediterranean in the near future, you will have to try to make it yourself. You won’t get completely real tahini at home, but it’s better than nothing at all. Fry sesame seeds (about a glass) and a little cumin in a dry frying pan. Grind well in a mortar with olive or sesame oil (the second, of course, is preferable).

Lemon juice is also an indispensable condition. Half a pan of hummus will take at least a whole lemon, or even one and a half to two. However, this is a matter of taste.

Next are the spices. At the very least, black pepper. But any Israeli housewife here will only sniffle: it’s boring! After all, there is also cumin (aka cumin), savory (not to be confused with thyme), ground dried ginger, ground chili pepper, coriander, paprika!.. And who’s stopping you from putting a little cumin in there, for example? Or a couple of teaspoons of whole sesame seeds? Or even take za’atar, a popular spice mixture in Israel. It is based on za'atar (a type of oregano, close to marjoram or hyssop), sesame and thyme. It comes with sumac, barberry, coriander... It goes perfectly with any legumes (lentil soup, pea porridge), so it has a perfect place in hummus.

Spices in grains (coriander, cumin, cumin, sesame...) are best first lightly heated in a dry frying pan. And then grind in a mortar or grind in a coffee grinder. Dry herbs (oregano, marjoram, savory...) can also be heated a little, but only a little, so that the unnecessary smell of burnt grass does not appear.

By the way, fresh herbs will also work: parsley, dill; not canonical, but interesting - cilantro. Just grind it a little and very well.

With “accessories”, in fact, that’s all. But we forgot about the basics.

Chickpeas are a tricky thing. Depending on how much water is chlorinated in your city, what type of peas you got, what time of year it is, or simply what mood the chickpea god is in today, it will cook from two to six to eight hours. In clean water - longer, in tap water - a little faster. Soaking overnight is almost mandatory. Many people recommend adding a couple of teaspoons of soda to the cooking water to soften it. We ourselves do not use this method out of a strange superstition, but we share the information. You need to pour a lot of water, two to three times more than peas, otherwise it will boil away - in about six hours!

How much chickpeas should I take? To “try” one glass is enough for you; the chickpeas will boil quite strongly. And once it goes, you’ll figure out the quantity yourself.

Actually, you will have to “figure it out yourself” with absolutely all the quantities. Proposing proportions is pointless. Different varieties of chickpeas, different acidity of lemons, different freshness of spices... Plus personal preferences. Some people like a lot of garlic, while others cannot tolerate it at all.

For the same reasons, it is impossible to guess in advance with the amount of oil. Sometimes literally a third of a glass is enough for a soft, tender puree, and sometimes chickpeas absorb a lot of it, and the puree continues to remain thick even after a good two hundred grams.

But overall it looks something like this:

Ingredients.
Required:
chickpeas (a couple of glasses)
tahini (2-4 tbsp.)
lemon juice (0.5-1.5 lemons)
garlic (1-5 cloves)
olive oil (80-200 g)
ground black pepper

Variable:
butter
savory
ground dried ginger
ground red pepper
cumin (cumin)
coriander
marjoram, za'atar, hyssop
sesame
paprika
caraway

Additive options:
parsley dill
pine or pine nuts
fried mushrooms
whole cooked chickpea grains
grated cheese
thin slices of cucumber
finely chopped sweet red pepper

Preparation:
1. Wash the chickpeas and soak them in warm water overnight.
By the way, if the room is hot, by the morning the chickpeas may begin to smell slightly sour, and a white foam will appear on the water. Don't be afraid, just rinse the peas well under running water.

2. Boil the chickpeas until tender (until the peas break easily and the skin comes off). Add salt at the very end.

3. Prepare spices: heat, grind.

4. Drain the water (or let it boil down). You can leave a little in the pan.

5. Add chopped garlic, butter, spices. Grind with a blender.

6. Add lemon juice, tahini, olive oil. Grind again. Grind until pureed until there are no whole peas or lumps left.

7. If desired, add finely chopped herbs and blend well again.

To the table!

Traditionally, hummus is a cold appetizer, but believe me, it is also divinely delicious when hot.

In Levantine countries, hummus is usually served like this: put it on a flat plate, spreading it in a thick layer with a small depression in the center. Sprinkle with paprika, sometimes sumac, and herbs. Sometimes a little olive oil is poured into the cavity, a handful of unground boiled chickpeas and/or other additives are added.

Place pita (ideally warm), chopped cheese, vegetables, and herbs on adjacent plates.

A curious version of hummus - laban-ma-hummus - is made in Palestine and Jordan: in it, tahini is replaced with natural yogurt (often goat's), and olive oil with butter.

Another version is called the funny word “masabcha” (or “mashavsha”) and consists of whole boiled chickpeas in a warm sauce of diluted hummus with tahini, olive oil and chopped garlic.

The main difference between masabcha is the whole grains, which are cooked even longer than for hummus, and become even more tender and soft.

In our deep conviction, hummus is an almost perfect dish, and in every way case - self-sufficient. But the idea of making balls out of it and frying it in vegetable oil is so old and so popular that it’s impossible not to mention it.
These balls are called “falafel” and occupy a dominant place in the street fast food of the Middle East. Yes, in general, let’s be honest: in Europe and America there are already, in general, almost as many falafel stalls as there are hot dog stalls. Nothing strange, given the spread of vegetarianism.

Making falafel at home, on the one hand, is strange and pointless - this is, after all, street food, but on the other hand, well, why not.

At the same time, we can experiment with canned rather than raw chickpeas.

Ingredients:
1 can (340 g) canned chickpeas
small red onion
3/4 tbsp. chopped spicy herbs (mint, cilantro, parsley)
1 tsp. ground cumin
a pinch of salt
ground black pepper
3/4 tbsp. breadcrumbs
100 g goat cheese
flour for breading

Preparation:
Drain the chickpeas. Blend chickpeas, onions, spices and herbs.
Add chopped soft goat cheese and ground breadcrumbs and blend again with a blender.
Place the resulting mass in a bowl, cover with film and place in the refrigerator for about an hour.
Form the chickpea mixture into small balls. You can flatten them a little to make “cutlets” - this will make it easier to fry. Roll the balls (cutlets) in flour.

Pour refined vegetable oil (2 centimeters) into a deep frying pan with a thick bottom, heat and fry the falafel in it until golden brown. Place on a paper towel to drain excess fat.

Serve immediately, with a side of fresh vegetables, lettuce, tzhin sauce, pita bread and lemon wedges.

And please don't eat falafel cold.

Don't like fried food? That's right. Better stuff eggs with hummus. Both tasty and healthy.

Ingredients:
6 boiled eggs
2 tbsp. l. hummus
1 tbsp. l natural yogurt
½ tsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. l. ready-made adjika (sauce, not dry spice)
a pinch of salt and hot red pepper

Preparation:
Cut the peeled eggs into halves. Remove the yolks, mash with a fork, mix with hummus, adjika, cumin and yogurt. Fill the egg whites with this mixture.

Place the eggs on a plate, sprinkle them with toasted pine nuts and crushed red pepper. Or - pepper and finely chopped parsley.

The first mentions of the traditional Jewish dish hummus are found long before the beginning of our era. Leading culinary experts are still arguing in which cuisine this dish first appeared. Despite this, hummus is considered one of the Jewish foods. What you eat hummus with, how to prepare it, and many other interesting things we will discuss in today’s article.

1 Lecture on cooking
2 Traditional Jewish snack
3 Composition:
4 Preparation:
5 Hummus: homemade recipe
6 Composition:
7 Preparation:

Cooking lecture

Hummus is a cold snack dish that has a smooth paste consistency. In Jewish cuisine, this appetizer is prepared from legumes, in particular chickpeas. By the way, the first mentions of chickpeas date back to the reign of the pharaohs. It is believed that these beans were a source of male strength.

Today, chickpeas have gained great popularity and are increasingly appearing on our tables as a side dish. If you want to surprise your household and add variety to your home menu, prepare hummus. The composition of this classic snack dish includes six ingredients:

freshly squeezed lemon juice;
tahini paste;
refined olive oil;
garlic cloves;
black allspice.

On a note! You won’t find tahini paste during the day; you won’t find this product on supermarket shelves. You need to visit an Arabic shop or prepare it yourself from cumin and sesame seeds.

Literally 15 years ago, hummus became known far beyond Israel, and today there are many options for its preparation. You can even make hummus from beans.

Chickpeas are known to have a number of beneficial properties. Firstly, these beans are a source of vitamins, vegetable protein, micro- and macroelements. Secondly, hummus has a beneficial effect on the digestive tract.

On a note! A 100 g serving of hummus contains about 400 kilocalories, so it is impossible to call this product low-calorie.

And one more important question. What is this snack dish served with? Traditionally, hummus is spread on pita bread, tortillas, or used as a sauce for chips.

Traditional Jewish snack

Homemade chickpea hummus is easy to make. All ingredients must be thoroughly ground in a blender so that the paste acquires a uniform consistency and is free of lumps.

Follow the established rules when cooking chickpeas. Initially, the beans are soaked in filtered water. It is best to leave them in water overnight. After cooking, the skin is removed from the chickpeas; this process is very painstaking.

On a note! On average, chickpeas cook for about two hours. But depending on the type of legume and the degree of chlorination of the water, this process can last up to 8 hours.

Compound:

2 tbsp. chickpeas;
20 ml refined olive oil;
50 g tahini paste;
3 pcs. garlic cloves;
salt to taste;
parsley - to taste;
a pinch of cumin, coriander, paprika.

Preparation:

Hummus: homemade recipe

A snack dish made from chickpeas turns out to be extremely tasty, satisfying, piquant and healthy. It is best to choose yellow chickpeas. Don’t be lazy and after cooking, remove the film from each bean. This will make the hummus more uniform and fluffy.

The taste of hummus directly depends on the added spices and herbs. In addition to cumin and paprika, you can add turmeric for color and dried herbs.

Compound:

0.2 kg of Turkish peas;
3 g dried cilantro;
4 things. garlic cloves;
20 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice;
5 g finely ground table salt;
3 g each of turmeric and cumin;
3 tbsp. l. refined olive oil;
50 g peanuts;
2 g black allspice;
5 g red sweet pepper.

Preparation:

On a note! Today, the traditional recipe for making hummus has undergone many changes. Now on the tables you can find beetroot hummus, a snack dish made from pumpkin pulp, zucchini, Tofu cheese, tomatoes, and nuts. In addition to the base, we add traditional ingredients, including tahini paste.

If you are unable to find tahini paste, you can make it yourself. You will need the following ingredients: cumin and sesame seeds. These products are fried in a hot frying pan and ground until smooth, adding refined olive oil or sesame seeds. Without tahini paste, you cannot prepare true Jewish hummus. Bon appetit!

All information provided on this site is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a guide to action. Before using any product, ALWAYS consult your physician. The site administration is not responsible for the practical use of recommendations from articles.

ABOUT... Gods, give me “Jewish citizenship” and the confidence that a plate of hummus will never leave our table... and Aunt Sarah will be calm!

In the meantime, my Syoma is balancing debits with credits and destroying the silence with the rattling of old wooden bills, I am leafing through an old notebook with yellowed pages, decorated with greasy fingerprints, in search of a recipe for real Jewish hummus, which I quickly wrote down, standing in the kitchen of a small restaurant in Haifa on northern Israel.

Believe me, store-bought hummus is no match for a homemade Middle Eastern snack. Fresh aromatic cilantro, spicy spices, garlic, a sweetish taste of ground sesame, a nutty aftertaste of chickpeas and lemon or lime sourness. When all these products come together on one plate, magic happens and you become a slave to toasted lavash and freshly baked pita bread, which are just reaching out for a new portion of hummus so that it can quickly go into your mouth... For some reason I was chatting with you, and Syoma taps the table with his fork for a while. I went, and you don’t deny yourself gastronomic pleasure...

To prepare hummus we will need:

Chickpeas - 300 grams

Sesame seeds - 100 grams

Olive oil - 150 grams

Garlic - 3 cloves

Cilantro - bunch, 50 grams

Jeera(Cumin)

Freshly ground pepper and salt to taste

Sweet red paprika

Juice of one lemon or two limes

Baking soda (for soaking chickpeas)

Hummus preparation steps:

Step #1. Cover the chickpeas with water at room temperature. Add baking soda to the bowl using the tip of a knife and leave to soak for a day. It would be nice if you could change the water in which you soak the chickpeas every 4 hours.

Step #2. Rinse the chickpeas with filtered water, place in a saucepan, add water, lightly salt and bring to a boil. After boiling, cook the chickpeas for about 4 hours over low heat.

Chef's advice: Do not pour out the resulting broth when cooking chickpeas; you will need it to dilute and give the desired consistency to hummus when grinding the ingredients in a blender.

Step #3. Now we make sesame paste (tahini, you can buy it ready-made in the store). Grind sesame seeds in a coffee grinder or high-speed blender to a creamy, thick paste.

Step #4. In a blender, combine garlic, cilantro, olive oil, lemon juice and the resulting sesame paste. Then add the cooked hummus peas and mix until smooth, adding a pinch of red pepper. Blend everything in a blender to form a paste. Bring the mixture with broth (remember I asked you not to throw out the water after cooking the chickpeas?) to the consistency of liquid porridge.

Step #5. Place the resulting mass on a plate, garnish with finely chopped cilantro, paprika, olive oil poured into the middle and sprinkle chili flakes on top.

Modern Jewish food is driving the gastronomic world crazy. About a year ago, Israeli chef Meir Adoni opened the Nur restaurant in New York, spoiled by rating establishments, but none of my American friends were able to get into it. I dined there myself only thanks to my personal acquaintance with the owner.

However, during my last two trips to Berlin, I was not able to sit down in the evening at Neni, perhaps the most fashionable establishment in the city, which is run by a Sephardic family from Vienna; I was lucky to book a table only for lunch. The Mogg restaurant in the building of the old Jewish school for girls, which now educates Berliners in the field of shakshuka, hummus, chicken soup with matzbols and pastrami, is also always crowded.

Paris and Vienna are simply obsessed with the savory, almost street food of Tel Aviv resident Eyal Shani. There is always a long queue at his Miznon. And when I go to London, I book Palomar a month in advance, which was opened in Soho by a team of Jerusalem chefs.

What is the secret of all these establishments? Warm atmosphere and gastronomic excitement! Many of the dishes only look familiar, like Jerusalem's famous burnt cauliflower, but sound fresh and are served with unexpected sauces, accompaniments and the kind of sophisticated casualness prized in the world's most famous gastrobistros. As Haya Molho, founder of Neni, says, modern Jewish cuisine embodies the main global trend - a mixture of traditions and multiculturalism.

"After World War II, European Jews again wandered across the continent. And thus our eclectic immigrant cuisine was born. My parents are from Romania. My father was a dentist and moved from city to city. During these lean years, he was often paid not in money, but in food. Sometimes bags of tomatoes, eggplants and herbs accumulated at home. According to old family recipes, the mother prepared aromatic sauces from vegetables, which even went well with yesterday’s bread, and invited neighbors. They were very different people, spoke unfamiliar languages, and became close friends at the table. years later, from here came the concept of Neni, where dishes based on a mixture of tastes are served in the center of the table for all eaters."

The concept turned out to be in demand, especially in megacities where people lack home warmth. As Yossi Elad, one of the creators of Palomar, says, the main thing in food is schmusen, which in Yiddish means “soulful communication.” Because real food, he adds, is full of stories: it tells where we come from, where we stand, where we are going. And they stand in Palomar on the “heels of grandmothers”: they came from different lands and brought their gastronomic stories, which their grandchildren now tell in their own way.

This is why the queue in Soho stretches out in the rain and cold, and the lucky ones who find themselves in a cramped room sit at the bar around the open kitchen or at tables in the hall, from where the bustle of the chefs is also visible: it feels like they are not working, but dancing around, having a wonderful time. Here you just want to eat everything. And baked octopus in tahini sauce with sweet tomato confit, and creamy polenta with mushrooms, asparagus and truffle aroma, and Persian-style oxtail stew, and Yemeni bread with various dips.

Israel, until recently traditionalist in plan, is now itself becoming a center of new culinary trends and gastronomic tourism. Pita with falafel and shawarma, meze with hummus and tabbouleh or the famous Israeli breakfast with shakshuka and yoghurt labneh - all this simple food has been teasing, beckoning, and burning in any eatery for decades.

What kind of eggplants are there, for example! No one cooks them as deliciously as Sephardic Jews. In general, eggplant is their best product. After all, when the Moors brought these vegetables to Spain in the 9th century, Europeans did not yet know how to cook them, and the fruits were also bitter. And eggplants were thrown at the gates of the Jewish ghettos in mockery. But Jewish mothers learned to rid the strange vegetable of its bitterness with the help of salt. Charcoal-roasted eggplant in Israel is traditionally served with sesame tahini paste and pomegranate seeds, which give its silky texture a rich, explosive flavor and vibrant appearance.

True, no one here really cares about aesthetics: the design of even quite gastronomic establishments is still elementary. You often come across different-sized cutlery and plates, nice, but never well-trained service. And Tel Aviv itself is still very atmospheric, growing rapidly, but unkempt, almost abandoned in places, and few people here are fashionable and well dressed.

Israelis have always had other preferences - food and warm communication. And today it is these values that have become in demand all over the world. It is no coincidence that statistics show: young people now prefer to spend money on experiences rather than on new things, and in the family budgets of Americans, for example, expenditure items on travel and gastronomy are much larger than on the purchase of expensive clothes

Today in Israel, fashionable restaurants have begun to appear, focused on creative cuisine, the soil for which has long been ripe. After all, Jews came to Israel from Russia, Morocco, Egypt, Poland, Iraq, Yemen, England, Spain, Germany, France, India, even China. And they brought with them the cuisines of their countries, which mixed with each other and adapted to local products and wines, the quality of which was constantly growing. Fusion, as we know, is the most nutritious gastronomic environment.

Western internships for local chefs also helped. Some lucky ones got a job with Rene Redzepi in Copenhagen Noma, with Alain Passard in Paris L "Arpege or in New York Nobu. Young chefs brought home even more new tastes and aromas. And now in fashionable Tel Aviv restaurants you can find shakshuka with foie gras, tabbouleh with bulgur popcorn, and even in street cafes in Tel Aviv you will come across pita with Thai or Indian curry Well, yes, the Israelis are a receptive, fun and creative people.

In London, Yotam Ottolenghi became the first star. Then the food world heard about the Jerusalem restaurant Mahane Yehuda, located in the market of the same name. Here, like Ottolenghi, they do not keep kosher, they cook seafood, pork, and meat in milk sauces, but the food always retains the smell of home, the aromas of the Promised Land and the recipes of several generations of people who came from Southern Europe, North Africa and Middle East. That trendy Palomar from London's Soho is a subsidiary of Mahane Yehuda, and now it's wowing the European food scene with advanced orange wines and creative takes on traditional mezes, falafel and hummus.

In the last couple of years, restaurants of new Jewish cuisine have also appeared in Moscow, one of the popular ones is Mitzva Bar. And Meir Adoni told me that he dreams of the Russian market.

To understand the very warm and unifying atmosphere of Israeli cuisine, try making at least the simplest hummus. By the way, this is an excellent Lenten dish: it is made from pureed chickpeas, tahini, vegetable oil, garlic and lemon juice. Hummus spread is one of the most common spreads in the world. It can be both an appetizer and a separate independent dish.

True, hummus contains one irreplaceable ingredient, which is not always easy to buy from us - tahini, sesame seed paste. Some enthusiasts make it themselves: dry 100 grams of sesame seeds in the oven, then pour it into a blender and grind, gradually adding olive oil, half a glass will be just right. But ready-made tahini is easy to find in online stores. Also have some dried and crushed aromatic cumin on hand: this is an optional element, but it greatly enhances the taste.

The chickpeas must be soaked in the evening, covered with a large volume of water (by weight it should be twice the weight of the peas). The next morning I wash it, fill it with fresh water and let it cook. As soon as it boils, skim off the foam, reduce the heat to low and add a teaspoon of baking soda: this is an old trick to make hard legumes boil faster and turn out tender. From 250 grams of dry peas, approximately 600 grams of boiled peas are obtained. But you don’t need to salt it, otherwise it will become stale.

It will take an hour and a half to two hours to cook, but you don’t need to stand over it. Only towards the end I squeeze the lemon juice and finely chop the parsley. I strain the peas through a colander. I put in a blender: peas, 200 grams of liquid tahini (if it is thick, you need to dilute it with water and stir), 100 ml ice water, 1.5–2 teaspoons salt, 4 tablespoons lemon juice (you can add zest), 4 cloves garlic, a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil, a little pepper. You should get a very delicate cream (if it’s too thick, add vegetable oil and ice water), which I always season with cumin, sprinkle with toasted pine nuts and finely chopped parsley (or cilantro), and pour with olive oil.

Hummus is best eaten with a bread flatbread (pita): you roll it up like a ladle and scoop out the paste. There are many creative options for hummus: with beets, roasted peppers, pumpkin, avocado and fresh mint, very tasty with curry. But the simplest, classic one is also good. It is no coincidence that today it is served everywhere, from French to Uzbek restaurants. And Israel, Lebanon and Palestine still bitterly dispute the right to be called his homeland.

There was even a movie about this once called “Make Hummus Not War”. After all, it’s true that it’s better to throw peas at each other than bullets, and your favorite food should become a common destiny. Perhaps it is no coincidence that when pronouncing the English chickpeas (chickpeas) one always hears peace - peace.